


every nine volt

by orphan_account



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Gore (Detroit: Become Human), Androids, Angst, Body Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Playing fast and hard with android physiology, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-04 00:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16336091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	1. halfway house

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittenBloodCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenBloodCoffee/gifts), [Crescentjasper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescentjasper/gifts).



Two days ago, Hank dropped a full glass bottle of vodka directly onto his big toe. There was thud, a slew of curse words and a sunny "that's probably broken, Hank". One trip to the emergency room, one phone call later and Hank is home free. In the meantime, he has been stagnating on the couch, swaddled by Sumo, a bag of frozen peas and his own sympathy.

The last time he was on limited duty was three years ago. He takes a look at the stack of paperwork and decides he'd rather busy himself by half-listening to the women on The View. They discuss Elijah Kamski's whataboutism, then his haircut then the weight he's lost. Hank nurses a beer.

One of the hosts is an android with long blonde hair and hoops you could stick a hand through. LEDs aren't fashionable anymore, but like Connor, she sports hers like a badge of honour. It was probably an executive decision. It is a lemony colour that compliments her complexion and her dialogue. She is formally posed and talks about android body politics in a digestible, trendy way that makes the audience erupt into applause.

He has his arm deep in a bag of potato chips when his phone vibrates. A look at the clock tells him that it's undoubtedly one of the updates that Connor has been sending him on the hour every hour. Hank's not technically on the clock so he lets it ring and returns to the TV android and her comically large earrings.

Three seconds later and his phone is vibrating so hard that it falls off of the coffee table. Hank manages to grab it before it lands on the floor. He laughs triumphantly and holds the phone above his head like a trophy. He looks at Sumo expectantly, as though he will clap and congratulate him on his fast reflexes.

Hank shoves another chip into his mouth, puts it on speaker and wedges it between his shoulder and his cheek.

"Hey, Connor. This had better be important. They're about to reveal the ten must-have pieces for Spring 2039."

There is a low rattle, then a pregnant pause.

"Connor? What's wrong?" Hank lurches upright. _"Connor?"_

"I put in a distress call." Connor's voice is uncharacteristically panicked. It is distorted and too low, obscured by fits of static as if it is being transmitted from a ham radio station.

"Hank. I'm... I..."

"Yeah, I'm listening. Use your words."

"I need help."

Connor's breaths come out shallow and uneven, then they stop. Hank checks that the call hasn't cut out. The timer continues to log the time he is wasting.

"Connor, don't do this to me." Hank snaps. Then with a small voice he'd developed for Cole, one designed to hide worry, he asks: "What happened? Where are you?"

Connor makes a series of noises that don't sound human. Hank waits for a place, a name, laughter in the background that lets him know that this is some sick joke. But there is just a wet sound like a flesh fruit being crushed and filtered through cloth.

Hank doesn't wait for a reply. His limbs feel wooden as he tugs on his coat. He grabs his car keys and stumbles out of the door with a stringent pace. He talks under his breath into the receiver even after he's sure that Connor can no longer hear him.

\---

A quick call to dispatch tells Hank Connor's location. It's not far but it's far enough. He doesn't wait for details. He's only had one beer but he breaks his rule and drives drunk.

He knows he _shouldn't_ but he puts on his lights. Downtown is heaving with lunchtime traffic. It's like the universe knows. He can't explain why it's always had it out for him.

He was a good guy before - he took his wife's cooking to the old man next door, held doors open for strangers, tipped generously and kept his nose clean. But now he doesn't have a wife, he spends his tip money on booze, you could wedge a door open with his disciplinary folder and strangers have a whole load of opinions about him. Fuck 'em.

And this? This is dessert. The pièce de résistance. His partner is bleeding out on a side-street somewhere and he's not there. Fuck the universe and _fuck_ its twisted sense of humour.

When he arrives on scene, he puts on his work face. There is an inferno of emergency lights. The streets is small - too small for the vehicle to get through. It is thronged with police officers and onlookers with furious opinions and nowhere else to be.

He spots a set of first responders with a collapsed stretcher and his stomach makes a home for himself in his throat. They didn't used to be called that, before the revolution. Now they have a new job title for a new world. They're MT's with an E. Hank hasn't bothered to find out what the M stands for. He's too busy cataloguing their names, the numbers on their suits.

The cops set up a cordon. Hank pushes his way through the crowd like the eye of a storm. This is outside of the municipality. He demands to be let through. They can smell the alcohol on him. He hobbles with his broken toe. Between that and the beard, think he's a bum, some washed-up asshole looking for trouble. His caterwauling gets him nowhere until he flashes his badge.

He doesn't look like his picture anymore. He won't let them take a new one. The man on his badge is a stranger, a father, an real upstanding citizen. Some slick from the 1st Precinct, Detective T.Rivera with his perfect fucking teeth thinks he stole it and is about to arrest him for impersonating a police officer.

The asshole has his partner bend Hank across a car. He is halfway through Hank's rights when Reed spots him. For the first time in his life, Hank is happy to see him. He could kiss him.

"Hey!" Gavin barks around his gum, pulling the fucker off of him. "What's the problem, asshole? He giving you a hard time, Hank?"

"You know this man?"

"Know him? He's my fucking boss."

Rivera shrinks.

"That android. What's her name?"

"Zoey."

"Hey, Zoey. Run an ID on this man for me," he stops and as an afterthough tags on a "please."

"Anderson Hank, Police Lieutenant, DOB 9/6/85", she runs off without blinking.

"Thanks, doll. Keep an eye on that partner of yours, all right? All the technology in the fucking world and people still wanna make themselves look like idiots."

Gavin has a hand on Hank's shoulder, firm but with a softness Hank's heard about but never seen for himself. The kindness makes him uneasy. He leads him beyond a holographic barricade. Hank misses police tape. It was the handiest tool in the trunk of his cruiser back when. Now everything's electronic, even his partner. But that's the thing about electricity - it shorts.

"Why the hell didn't anybody call me?"

"You knew about it before we did. You might wanna - uh, you might wanna brace yourself."

Miller is over Connor like he is a body and Hank's breath stops at his throat. Connor lies oddly, legs in uncomfortable positions as though Hank is looking at a photo of him taken at a Dutch angle. His hands are secured behind his back with zip ties that he should have been able to break. Blood beads around his wrists like blue link bracelets. His shoulder hangs out of the socket as if somebody had taken his arm and then _pulled._

One of his shoes is missing.

There is Thirium mottling what is left of his uniform and his hair. It leaks out of his ears. It clings to his forehead, to the blistering reds of his LED. Surplus Thirium gives the saline on his cheek a blue pigment. It makes Connors skin look even whiter. Hank can feel the heat coming off him from three feet away.

The EMT's ready equipment. Like everyone else, they seem to be real busy doing nothing. Connor starts suddenly, opening his mouth wider and wider when he spots Hank. He sobs more freely then. He wheezes as though his throat is full of smoke. His mouth opens and closes like an old disk drive that is jammed. Hank hushes him sharply on his approach. When he reaches him, he turns him over so he can open his mouth and ventilate.

There is a hole where his face should be.

Hank covers his mouth and swallows the urge to put some distance between the two of them. Connor looks like a cross-section of an android with half of the skull removed. He looks like a robot from an old sci-fi movie with it face ripped off. He looks like the hollowed out bodies he'd find in ice dens where they'd strip androids for Thirium and leave them for dead.

It's been over a year since Connor entered his life. He's grown into his own. He's finally grasped the idiosyncrasies of expression - _almost_. CyberLife got the cosmetic composition down. It's easy to forget what he is. But not like this.

Hard noises fall out of his suggestion of mouth, something you'd hear in an abattoir, bloodied meat against a block. Hank can see all the way down Connor's throat and the top row of his teeth. A good two are missing. There's a bite mark, then a laceration that crosses the length of Connor's tongue, too straight and too purposeful. Somebody did that to him. Thirium spurts out of the wound with each of the loud beat of his thirium pump.

His overlay clips in and out like an old neon sign. Hank is not sure what is worse: Connor's panicked expression or the bone white plastic beneath. The eye to his left is completely black, like he's wearing a sclera lense. It hangs lower than usual. The browns of the other are imbued with blue blood. Thin wires fall like overhanging branches out of the window of his skull. It's as though his veins burst onto the pavement through the gaps in his eye sockets.

Hank is scared to touch him in case he moves him the wrong way.

Connor burns like a cigarette in the oppressive cold of the January morning. Hank's hands sting as he pulls him off the pavement like a dead animal. Connor seems to weigh nothing. Maybe it's a feat of hysterical strength. Maybe Connor is hollow.

Hank clings to him like a burr and holds him up against his chest. Hank talks to him about anything - about nothing and Connor replies with incoherent noises through a mouthful of blood.

During the cultural competency training they'd all been made to take, Hank had learnt that androids' tongues are cosmetic and that they are fitted with a box that grants them four octaves for the usual range of the human voice. That doesn't explain why Connor makes wet noises like a downspout after the rain has stopped.

The techs approach eventually. They ask his name and when he can't tell them, Hank lets them know, quite firmly that it's Connor. They introduce themselves by name and let him know what they are about to do. Just a few months ago, they'd have just gone about their work. Sometimes the world turns so fast on its axis that Hank feels as though he will fall off if he stops to catch his breath.

Connor backs away against Hank' chest as they begin to cut him out of his shirt, out of the ties, to plug things into him. Hank cards his fingers through Connor's hair. He is connected to a machine than makes a noise like a busy phone signal. They shine lights in his eyes, take a look at his throat, listen to his insides with a stethoscope that has a probe in its stem instead of a chest piece.

One of the technicians instructs Hank to hold Connor at a forty-five degree angle and keep him still while the other pulls out no end of sharp things in blister packs. Connor struggles in Hank's grip like a animal. His arm is raised behind his head - the good one. Hank can't look but there is a blunt popping sound, a sound like a car engine giving up the ghost, a rush of air and Connor finally, _finally_ breathes.

But the noise he makes immediately after is so sharp and certain and pained that Hank sees white.

\---

The repurposed CyberLife storefronts sit in an awkward limbo between repair shops and medical facilities. They're _not_ hospitals, Hank has to remind himself - there are no health pamphlets spilling out of boxes on the wall, there are no careful furnishings and there's no smell of iodoform adhering to his skin. That's why a physician isn't about to breeze in to deliver bad news.

This is not a hospital but there's the white on white, the firm chairs, the waiting. The androids that work here wear professional faces and scrub dresses.

Hank feels as if he is somewhere far beyond the Earth's exosphere, way past the Karman line, floating somewhere silent and hollow. Outer space is warmer than this inbetween place. He paces back and forth and wonders if he is experiencing time slowly relative to the stationary object that asks him on the hour every hour if he would like a coffee, a tea, some water. The answer is always a curt "no, thank you".

Eventually, Hank gives into his toe's objects and sits and thumbs through an e-newspaper. For the first time, he's grateful for it. Hank misses print. There is something rustic about the smell of a new book, the weight of it, leafing through it with his fingers. He couldn't take another five-hour stint with dog-eared year old magazine. It'd be too much like deja vu.

Hanks reads an article about rituals that will make him happy. The first is practising gratitude. The next article he reads is about how naming his demons can help him move forward. But Hank is already on a first-name basis with his. They have keys to his house. They don't ever leave.


	2. circles

The plastic chairs are arranged in a tight circle, like in an AA meeting. Hank had been to one once. He'd been given no alternative after he'd puked in his desk. Hank always thought they were bullshit - a halfway house towards recovery with cracked foundations. He never cared for listening to strangers with hipflasks strapped to their legs talk of sobriety. It's a charade, like the hush about this place.

There's an engineered calm and the ripe hum that filters through any space that is occupied by more than a couple of androids. They have him a couple of doors down while they triage him. He could be making all manner of noise and Hank would be none the wiser.

The waiting room is a diorama of Hart Plaza. Hank is reminded of Detroit's own stargate and its annular amphitheatre. He thinks about how he could gather a handful of theatregoers for the denouement. Any moment now, Connor will reemerge smiling without a hair out of place, like always. He will take a curtain call and bow and it will be as if nothing happened.

That's how it is with him. Hank has seen him survive things no man could, no android could. He's convinced his partner is bulletproof, indestructible, forged from a new heteromaterial, some CyberLife company secret with a fancy, unpronouncable name.

He imagines Connor being a regular Clark Kent and concealing a secret identity, a cape and tights beneath his pressed suit. He lets these things - these stupid things - occupy his mind. It's better than trying to conceive what happened in the short time between now and this morning. He'll find out in due course. And he'll make the perps wish they'd never been born.

Hank's name has to be called three times before it breaches the surface of his thoughts, before he is summoned back to life like the fruitcake ghost from that Halloween movie.

His head snaps up and an apple-cheeked KL900 greets him. Her name badge reads 'Erin', same as his ex-wife. She has a soft edge and the demeanour of an air hostess. She tells Hank that they're still working on Connor but he's stable and that can't go in but he can see him, if he'd like. And Hank swears she is a messenger of the gods, that he sees a halo crowning her flawless ballet bun.

It's a little over two hours since his ass cheeks become one with the guest chair. He knows it's been that long because he's become as acquainted with the clock as he is the articles in _Gossips Weekly_ and _Tech Addict_ , with his ringtone, with the mosaic of Thirum on his untied shoes.

Hank feels his age in his knees as he stands. Erin moves as if to help but soon stops herself. It's subtle, this residual programming from before.

Hank thanks her. This is a kindness. This isn't her job anymore. He gets it. He bar-tended for three months before the academy. That was over thirty years ago and he _still_ dials in on the conversation of strangers. His body wakes him up at six thirty on weekdays. When he buys his cigarettes, he sometimes picks up big bags of candy instead of flowers.

Primary function is deep-rooted in androids like an old evil.

Connor struggles the absence of it. He counts: things, people, words. Words are his favourite. They have letters and syllables and he can feel their weight dance across his tongue. He idles sometimes. Hank finds him completely stationary, cycling through reds and yellows like a man-shaped Christmas tree. Connor lurks in corners like an otherworldly thing that doesn't want to admit it's dead. Hank has to rotate tasks like chew toys to keep him from ripping up the carpets, from tensing the muscles in his jaw, from chewing his lip or the skin around his fingers.

He is lead down an endless white corridor that tests his sense of balance. He's getting old, real old. Erin is patient with him, with his cursing and his lame walk.

Hank forgets that she was built like that, with an affected politeness. He forgets until she hands him over to a pair of white shoes with greying hair and a face as telling as a stopped watch. They shake hands. The technician introduces himself by name, but Hank doesn't care for it. He's too distracted by the deep blue stain crawling up bottom of his scrubs like a trouser sock.

He is ushered into a side room. It's longer than it is wide, with a sweeping viewing window. Hank is pulled towards the glass by the same force that seems to always bind him and Connor together. That's Gavin's favourite joke. Where one goes the other follows. They're like twins, like Thelma and Louise, like a set of symbionts.

When life fucks him over, there's no politeness, no forewarning, no grace period. There's just a sudden impact like an earthquake that laughs and leaves him to pick up the pieces. At this point, Hank's learnt to step back and assess the damage. The nameless technician runs him through it with big words that mean fuck all to him. It's background noise anyway. Hank has blinders on and all he sees is forward.

He sees Gavin first. Connor's a bona fide person now, with the protections of any other officer. Gavin stands in front of the door to the room with his arms behind him like a rent-a-cop. Like everyone else in the room, he wears an isolation gown over his blues. His eyes are fixed to the ceiling. He's not running his mouth like a faucet. And that's the most disturbing pat of it all.

Until now, Hank had never scrutinised the whole of Connor, connecting computer part to computer part, in an entire picture. It is unnatural, like auditing a person and doing inventory on their ribs, their legs, their organs.

Connor is tooth white against the stainless steel table. They've taken his uniform away and he lays flat on his side like a dead thing. He looks _wrong_ , with his shoulders pulled forward, his arms in, and his legs at unnatural angles, his face pressed out of sight against the table. He is a marionette without the strings he needs to manipulate his body. He's a doll dropped.

There's no dignity in it. There's a machine in the corner with a sheet draped over it. Clearly, the thought didn't extend to Connor. Technicians have infamously bad bedside manner. The things they're fixing didn't adjure it before, didn't talk or cry or protest. The world is learning, from its difficult in-between place in the afterglow of the revolution and so are the people that live on it.

Connor shakes as though all of his wiring is coming apart and Hank remembers cracking jokes with the nurses about how cold the operating room was when Cole was born. Then it occurs to him that androids can't process the cold, even when it kisses their metal bones. Every jolty movement is all Connor, all nerves. And his stomach tangles itself up like a bunch of Christmas lights.

"He's online, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Why?" The word is weighty. Hank puffs his chest out, makes himself bigger. He's had all the training in the world and he had never been able to curtail that physiological reaction. That's why he's always finding himself knee-deep in shit.

"So that he can initiate micro-repairs. It's less invasive if he does it for himself. We could do that for him but that involves opening him up."

"Then do that instead."

"Can't." He yawns and Hank considers how neatly his fist could fit into the bastard's mouth. "All sorts of red tape. Body autonomy and all that. We've taken the stress off of his systems, the rest is down to him."

The bands around Connor's wrists are gone. Thirium clusters against the puncture the EMTs made in his chest. An android restocks a bag of Thirium. It hangs from a pivot hook like an upturned milk bottle and feeds him through tubes inserted into the back of his neck.

They wipe Thirium away as they work. Damp blue cloths sit in a bowl of water on a crowded desk alongside him. Four small monitors sit atop it, arranged in two rows. Hank takes in all of the wires and all of the machines and all of their readouts and can't make sense of it.

The technician continues to talk into the empty air. Hank watches as they roll Connor over onto his back. Hank has seen the damage for himself but his gut still twists on sight of the half scream his partner's face is etched into. They've removed his optical units from their sockets.

A metal scaffolding keeps his jaw together. They've fixed his teeth, his lip but his face looks like a 10-55 he got called to too late. Without the overlay, his tongue lolls like a grey slug, bloated and cumbersome. There's a metal clip attached to it to ensure that nothing spills out of the gash. It creeps about his mouth as if Connor is trying to explore the extent of the injury for himself. It is too heavy to lift.

"He can't see what's happening, if that's what you're worried about."

"No shit, I can see his fucking eye sockets. And if you're gonna tell me he can't feel it either, then save it. Feed your Rainbow Bridge crap to someone who buys it. "

The technician thumbs through his tablet as if it contains cue cards to remind himself how to continue the one-sided conversation they'd been having, how to calm a man as big as a house, forceful as a storm, defensive as a father.

Connor's shoulder snaps back into place too easily. A couple of plastic ties and the loose wires return to their rightful place up in Connor's skull. He gets a shiny new eye that's steel grey because they don't make brown ones for RKs anymore. It's wrong. But it does the trick and slots into him easy. They blow compressed air into his face and Connor makes the most pathetic noise.

He watches them piece his partner back together like a patchwork quilt, a marriage of metal and plastic. When they're finished, they pull his limp arms through the holes of a paper gown. He'd hate this, Hank thinks, really hate it. Like he hates when Hank fixes his tie or his hair. And he'd let them know about it, if he could speak.

They begin to turn off the monitors one-by-one and pack up their things.

But the hole is there, careening out of the corner of his mouth and down his throat like vomit. It's a starling, loud thing that everyone is ignoring. They don't fix it and they don't remove the wire trailing down his throat. Hank assumes it opens and closes the flap that allows Connor to blend heated air with air from the room. He'd had this explained to him once, when Connor had overheated.

Gavin talks to one of the techs as he tugs the frock off. Hank can't make out what they're saying because he's still chewing his gum like a fucking rookie. Hank is sure he'd light up in there if they'd let him. He's not sure he'd blame him.

The android from earlier brings people into the room. Her face is colder this time around. They're students - their young faces and their jackets say so. They stand around and watch, like this is some sick film festival. Connor's always had an air of celebrity, his own deviant hunter, now a learning curve, the robocop with the gap in his face.  
Connor lies stock-still against the table, with his new eyes splayed open like a corpse in a morgue. They kept him like that, filled his body with cement. The technicians talk over him, around the absence of his face and the saline sweeping down the remaining side of it. Gavin squeezes his shoulder.

That's all Connor is now: tubes and holes.

\---

When Hank finally gets to see Connor without a wall keeping them apart, they've turned his skin back on and with the overlay, he looks more like himself, more human. That is until it ends abruptly at the junction between his cheek and his teeth. They've glued a plastic film to it that will need replacing. It keeps dirt out, protects the hardware beneath like one of those screen protectors. They've given Hank spares and told him how to clean it.

"Plastic is malleable. If this were a superficial wound, it would knit itself back together. He would employ his repair facilities and reconfigure the plate on its own."

"Like pounding a dent out of a car?" Hank gives.

"Uh, I guess."

"So how come he can't fix it on his own?"

The technician employs his thumb to turn Connor's face to the side.

"The damage was too severe. usually, we'd replace the individual components rather than create an entire new plate. But the left side of its face is structurally unsound."  
Connor's hair is all over the place and it's unnatural as the moon in the day. Connor's eyes flit back and forth sleepily and Hank wishes he had a comb. He's listening. His fingers, his toes twitch of their own accord as his body switches itself back on.

They made Hank wash his hands before he entered the room. He had to really scrub them, get familiar with the skin between his fingers and the pits of his cuticles. Once, twice, three times and then they were satisfied.

"When can I take him home?"

"It will take a couple of days to mould a new-"

"I don't give a fuck about his face. I asked when I could take him home."

"He's stabilising. He should be fully operational and reoriented to the repairs by morning. We'll call you."

Hank pulls up a stool, leather threadbare at the edges with its guts hanging out. He settles a hand into Connor's hair and his pearl white chest hitches clumsily. The technician looks at him like he has overstayed his welcome.

"I said-"

"I heard you the first time." He isn't going anywhere.

“He’s tough, sir." Says the android with the blood. "He’ll be fine.” Hank doesn't doubt it, he just pulls his jacket back around himself and settles in for a long night.


End file.
